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A Male Heir, but a Throne Fit for Queens

LONDON — There was a certain irony in the birth of a male heir to the British crown last week: For the first time in history, a baby girl would have become future queen irrespective of any future brothers after succession rules were made gender-neutral earlier this year.

But then the fountain in Trafalgar Square here turned baby-boy-blue on July 23, not pink. Men have had first dibs on the British throne even as queens have occupied it for 125 out of the past 200 years. Now that women have equal access, that access could be blocked for the best part of a century by a succession of at least three princes: Prince George; his father, Prince William; and his grandfather, Prince Charles.

It was striking by what a wide margin the public appeared to favor a princess: Bookmakers reported a 7-in-10 chance of the baby being a girl based on hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth in bets.

This pro-girl bias is a break from history — and you don’t have to go back four and a half centuries to Henry VIII having poor Anne Boleyn beheaded for failing to give him a male heir. When the current queen was in labor and about to give birth to Charles in 1948, a well-wisher reportedly told her husband, Prince Philip, on his way to Buckingham Palace: “I hope you have a boy.”

This time around, such comments were rare, though not completely absent. The CNN correspondent Victoria Arbiter congratulated the Duchess of Cambridge for producing a male heir: “This is how brilliant a royal Kate is. There are women throughout British royal family history who have panicked over not being able to deliver a boy, and here we are. Kate did it — first time.”

A more common reaction was disappointment: “Have to say, I’m disappointed it’s not a girl,” Katie Razzall, a reporter and host for the British broadcaster Channel 4, posted on Twitter shortly after the announcement. Zoe Williams, writing in The Guardian, seemed equally unhappy: “No chance to test the new rules on succession unfortunately.”

A front-page article in The Times of London the day after the birth summed it up: “The rewriting of history will have to wait.”

But would a queen-in-waiting have rewritten history?

When Queen Victoria took the throne in 1837, women’s rights activists at the time hoped in vain that she might endorse their cause. Neither has the current queen, Elizabeth II, been a champion of feminism. But if Britain became one of the first countries to elect a female leader — Margaret Thatcher in 1979 — it might have been in part because voters were used to the sight of a female head of state.

“The very example of these two prominent queens prepared Britons for Thatcher,” said Arianne J. Chernock, a specialist on British royal history at Boston University.

In the 21st century, the royal role-model-effect looks very different.

One reason the Succession to the Crown Act, which abolished male primogeniture in April, was so uncontroversial was that it merely caught up with reality: Queen Victoria reigned in Britain for almost 64 years, and Elizabeth is in her 62nd year. But another reason is that the institution of the monarchy itself has become increasingly “feminized,” Ms. Chernock said.

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“It’s now an almost exclusively ceremonial institution that is about philanthropy and looking the part rather than about real power,” she said. “Monarchs represent, they work in charity, they are followed for their fashion — these are qualities that we culturally associate more with women.”

In that sense, a princess might have reinforced rather than challenged gender stereotypes in the 21st century — and a king is in some ways more likely to break those stereotypes: “It’s awkward being a male royal because you can’t be a traditional male leader — you are the figurehead of this very feminized institution,” Ms. Chernock said.

Charles, who is next in line for the throne, “has put up with insinuations that he is thick, pompous, heartless and oversubsidized,” The Economist wrote this week. “Even the arch-monarchist Daily Mail wrote a story recently about the courtier employed to carry his favorite cushion around in the tone the paper ordinarily reserves for asylum-seekers.”

That may explain the regret expressed on the British Web site of the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan: “Gone is the dream of a modern Queen, winning over the world with her Diana and Kate-like grace, decadently clad in designer to boot.”

The running commentary on the bump and pregnancy dress code of the duchess formerly known as Kate Middleton over the past seven months echoed the media obsession with her husband’s late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. (How quickly the duchess gets back into shape is no doubt next. As the Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman quipped on Twitter after the birth: “I hope Kate has lost her baby weight by now. I mean, it has been four hours now, you know.”)

To be sure, there may be some unintended side effects that the architects of the new succession law may not have anticipated. Some female aristocrats have been using the changes to lobby for gender-neutral inheritance rules across the blue-blooded spectrum, for example. And other monarchies that still have male primogeniture, like Spain, have been nudged to have their own succession debate.

However much female royalty conforms with expectations, they have busy schedules, and there is one area where they are likely to challenge traditions no matter what: in the public debate about work-life balance and motherhood.

The current queen has had her share of judgment. Her son was 5 when she was crowned in 1953. A young sovereign with an active schedule, she was also a young mother criticized for appearing too cold with her children in public and for missing their birthdays.

The news media will no doubt go on to scrutinize the choices of the Duchess of Cambridge.

“Kate is not going to be a stay-at-home mother,” Ms. Chernock said. “That’s just not an option.”